The Remarkable Myth of a Nameless Lady: A Historical Regency Romance Novel Read online

  The Remarkable Myth of a Nameless Lady

  A Historical Regency Romance Novel

  Emma Linfield

  Edited by

  Robin Spencer

  Contents

  A Thank You Gift

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Epilogue

  Extended Epilogue

  The Rise of a Forsaken Lady

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Also by Emma Linfield

  About the Author

  A Thank You Gift

  Thanks a lot for purchasing my book. It really means a lot to me, because this is the best way to show me your love.

  As a Thank You gift I have written a full length novel for you called The Betrayed Lady Winters. It’s only available to people who have downloaded one of my books and you can get your free copy by tapping this link here.

  Once more, thanks a lot for your love and support.

  With love and appreciation,

  Emma Linfield

  About the Book

  She stole his heart, but he let her keep it...

  Irish-born and still mourning the loss of her brother, Alicia Price’s dislike for the English reaches a new high when the new Duke of Woodworth sets foot on Irish soil. When her father orders her to enter his employ to spy on him, she has no choice but to obey.

  After an eventful first day, Jacob Norton is already wary of his new title. Not only his family but also his staff are acting strangely. And it all seems to have been triggered by the arrival of one peculiar maid.

  But sometimes the devil wears a friendly face. The secrets that reside within Ravencliff Manor are greater than any could ever imagine.

  And when the attack finally happens, Alicia and Jacob are unprepared to face the truth: this is not the first time they meet…

  Chapter 1

  Grim and unsmiling, he rode down the road slowly, allowing his horse to pick its own way between the well-traveled ruts. Every step he’d traveled, he’d felt it—an invisible noose of responsibility hanging around his neck. He was positively choking from it now, his expression growing more and more somber as he entered the town.

  The road winding down to the village was long and zigzagged down the hill, past pasture and field until it reached the village proper. Ballycrainn was much the same as a hundred other Irish villages he’d seen. A gathering of whitewashed houses, a handful of shops and businesses lined the roads. This was maybe a little bigger than the rest, with a crossroads at the center. To the left he saw a church, the right led to a public house. Saints to sinners in the space of several feet. With a drama unfolding in the center.

  A woman stood at the side of the road, her blue skirts tugged by the wind. A modest cap upon her head was not enough to contain the startling red of her hair, bright against the porcelain of her skin. She was a small thing, seemingly frail, and most definitely not wishing to go with the man who had her arm.

  The gentleman in question was a good twenty years older than her, wisps of hair the same red as the girl’s chasing across his forehead beneath his cap. His face was grizzled, badly in want of a shave, his clothing untidy and patched. He shouted at the girl, mindless of the attention he was drawing or the way she pulled away from him.

  Jacob was not the only one interested enough in the drama to stop. A man with a cart stood uneasily to the side, a pair of women with baskets watched from the door of a shop of some kind.

  None made a move to help her.

  The girl pulled away suddenly from the man, the basket on her arm coming up between them as though to strike at the man, though she drew back at the last minute. “I will not be having you manhandling me, Robert Price. I told you this morning, I willna go to your precious meeting, and I mean it.”

  “You will. You will tell them your answer is yes and be done with it!” the man responded with a growl. In a blur, his hand shot out and smacked the woman across the face so hard that the sound ricocheted through the street like a musket shot.

  A gasp of horror went up from the crowd of villagers, the women shaking their heads and muttering amongst themselves, while the men clicked their tongues in disapproval. Yet not a single soul made a motion to intercede as a livid handprint began to emerge against the pale of her cheek.

  Jacob’s jaw tightened as he swung down from his horse and stepped forward where no one else would. “I think the lady has made her position rather clear, sir. I would thank you to unhand her and go on your way.”

  The man answered without taking his eyes from the girl. “And I would thank you to mind your own bloody business,” he shot back, his voice thick. “How I handle me daughter is of no concern of yours, fancy Lord or no.”

  “Daughter or not, to strike a woman on a public street is an act of effrontery that should—” he emphasized this word, with a contemptuous look at the bystanders who shuffled awkwardly under his gaze, “—should outrage even the most hardhearted of men. The fact that there seems to be none willing to stand up to you tells me you are a known bully, and a disgrace to the village.”

  “Eff-front-ery!” the man mocked him. “His Lordship speaks awfully high-blown for a man with no business here.”

  “I rather think it is my business,” Jacob said quietly. “Given that I am the new Duke of Woodworth. The village and those within it are my responsibility, one you will find that I take very seriously.”

  He stepped forward, the horse’s reins loosely twisted about his wrist. “Though I will have you know that even were I not the Duke of this district, I would take offense at your actions, for I find them despicable. A man who strikes a woman is not a man at all, but a useless cur.”

  At this, the stranger’s eyes narrowed. He stepped forward, his hand moving to his belt where it was plain to see he wore a sheathed knife. The girl shrieked and darted forward, placing one hand upon her father’s arm, the other outstretched against Jacob’s approach.

  “I beg of you, to leave this matter here. What my father does is of no business of yours. He has hardly hurt me. The slap stung only a moment and was well-deserved for I had defied him most publically. It is I who owe him an apology, and you also, Your Grace, for causing such a stir.”

  A muscle twitched in Jacob’s jaw as she spoke, for he could still clearly see the handprint upon her face. “A lady does not
apologize for being beaten.”

  “I am not a lady, Your Grace. Only a simple girl who does not always think. I would thank you to be on your way, and consider this matter solved. I am sure they are expecting you at the manor. What goes on in this village is very little of your concern. Your title and your fine blue coat notwithstanding, you have no say here. Leave your interfering to your own lands, and leave us to manage ours.”

  He studied her up-tilted face, seeing in the sunlight the faint scattered freckles across her nose, the eyes of amber that flashed fire and held no small amount of scorn. She had a sharp tongue for such a frail form, and he found himself admiring her for that, even if she was decidedly wrong.

  “On the contrary, I have found that my fine blue coat,” he paused to spread his arms as though examining his uniform, with special attention to the epaulettes that decorated his shoulders, “has given me quite a lot of say wherever I go. And a title holds quite a bit of weight when it comes to local matters.”

  “Faugh! You will find differently, Your Grace,” the man sneered from behind the girl, turning away from the conversation in disgust, looking for all the world like the coward he was, slinking toward the public house. “I have no time for the likes of you.” He disappeared through the door, the girl hesitating a moment on the threshold before hurrying after.

  Jacob stood there, stunned by the flagrant disrespect as much as by the girl’s own defense of the situation. To have both father and daughter walk away from him went well beyond a slight. Coupled with the words, it might well have been a challenge.

  But Jacob had not risen to the rank of Captain by being a fool. The crowd around him was waiting on his response, and there were a good many spoiling for a fight, if the looks on their faces was any indicator. He was a lone man who had chosen to ride without retinue—foolishly, perhaps. But he had wanted the time alone, to prepare himself for what he would have to do next.

  He regretted that now, realizing that he truly was little more than a man standing alone in a growing mob looking for an excuse at trouble. Title would not matter in a riot, nor would a uniform, fine or otherwise.

  “I will remember this,” he said to the crowd, his voice quiet and deadly calm as he took the reins of his horse from the boy, taking the time to give him a coin for his trouble. “You will find I am not a harsh man. But I am fair. And I will not tolerate bullies.”

  With that he mounted and followed the road out of the town, glad that he remembered this route at least, for it would have spoiled the exit to have had to ask for directions. Not that he would have trusted that anyone would have sent him on the right path, had he inquired.

  This was not the welcome home he had expected.

  The stallion snorted and plunged under him. Miles of hard riding behind us and the horse still has spirit enough to dislike the way the wind tears at clothing drying on a line next to a house. Jacob shook his head and reined in the animal, growing weary of the constant battle of wills that man and horse had indulged in for the past two weeks.

  The horse snorted but stood as commanded. The two of them had finally come to an understanding of sorts. Jacob shook his head and used the pause as an excuse to take his bearings. The narrow Irish roads cut through the hills without markings, signposts few and far between. There was a crossroads here, and right now he was unsure which turning to take.

  Beside him, a figure came out a farmhouse door—a woman with a ruddy face and a half dozen children clinging to her skirts. She shouted something to him, something impossible to make out between her thick accent and the squalling of the baby in her arms.

  Ireland.

  He thought the word with a world of contempt behind it. This was not the journey he would have chosen, and he longed again for a solid deck under his feet, the wind and the waves his to command.

  “Ravencliff?” he shouted, making the name of the manor a question, hoping such would suffice in gaining him a direction—at least before he rode miles out of his way like he had twice already, since setting out from the docks of Belfast after his arrival from Liverpool.

  The woman smiled and nodded, one arm pointing to the left of the branching road. What she shouted with the gesture was anybody’s guess. Likely further directions, that were of no consequence. He could always ask again at the next crossroads if it, too, proved to be unmarked. He reached into his pouch to fling her a coin, thanking her profusely before nudging the horse back into motion.

  Her thanks were lost in the pounding of hooves. His mount loved to run and seemed near tireless, though he could not say the same for himself. Surely I must be near, he thought, as they traveled between emerald green fields dotted with sheep. I remember so little from the last time I was here.

  But he’d been a boy then, and the trip had been made by carriage. He didn’t remember paying attention to the surroundings after the quiet monotony of several days on the road. The hills, though, seemed vaguely familiar, and the way the road rose between a copse of woods, the forest the town had been named for.

  Ballycrainn. Place of Trees.

  The name was the extent of his Irish, despite having had several Irish sailors under his command at sea. But then he’d been a Captain in the Royal British Navy—of course he would expect his crew to speak to him in the tongue of the country they fought for.

  He reached the top of the hill and took a breath, turning to look back, and there before him lay the town, in the shallow bowl of the valley, a place carved out of the forest. For the second time in the last hour, he drew his horse to a halt. This time not to ask questions but to look first behind, then once again ahead.

  Beyond lay the forest. In the distance, over the tops of the trees, he saw the ocean. Somewhere that way lay the old castle, and the manor house that was to be his home henceforth. Ravencliff.

  The setting was idyllic. Beautiful even, in its dress of summer green, the color so intense as to seemingly burn his eyes to look upon it for too long.

  He hated it. Every bit of it.

  Chapter 2

  She was still shaking. Alicia came through the door and set her basket down hard enough on the table it was a wonder the eggs didn’t break. This wasn’t how she’d intended the day to happen. If she’d had her druthers, she’d be at the market now, trying to keep Crichton true to his word about the agreed upon price for these eggs. She was counting on that money for a bit of lace to freshen her dress.

  Instead, she was here at the Broken Tankard with her father, the one place that she had sworn upon waking she would not go today. That black-haired dandy had spoiled everything with his sudden heroics. Even now, she half-expected him to be following her father through the door.

  But the door swung shut behind Robert Price and those in the shadowy reaches of the room shifted anxiously, their greetings quiet. Alicia looked around in surprise, seeing the worried, wan faces around her and realized they had likely heard all, and expected, same as she, some manner of repercussion.

  The fool. The green-eyed fool! What had he been thinking to challenge her father in the village like that? Robert Price held court in this pub with as much authority here as a king did in his castle. One word from him and the men in this room would have devoured such as that blue-coated Duke.

  She fussed with the cloth covering the basket, removing it, ostensibly to check the eggs before tucking it back securely again. Around her the room came to life, quiet chuckles giving way to relieved laughter as the man at the window reported the Duke had mounted his fine horse and ridden away.

  “I daresay our Duke is very much put out,” called Colin, who fancied himself funny with the exaggerated English accent he placed on the last four words, his thick brogue disappearing entirely. He loved mocking their British landlords, and had practiced the accent a long time to good effect. The group roared now, with the confidence of those who knew they’d gotten the better of someone over them.

  Alicia sat down hard on the bench in front of her and glared crossly around the room. There were few en
ough women in the gathering. The exceptions were old Maggie, who was busy pouring ale, and Kathleen, whose laughter was loud and coarse as she leaned over her lover, Connor O’Larendon. Connor blushed, which of course was why she was so blatant in her possessiveness. Kathleen was one who thrived on attention.

  Her father chose that moment to join her, setting a mug of ale down so hard on the table in front of her that the contents sloshed over the edge. Alicia shifted her basket hastily away from the spreading puddle, having no wish to visit the market reeking of the stuff. This fact her father well knew, though he insisted on bringing her drinks anyway, then drinking them himself.